Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Sundance Announces 2017 Premieres, Midnight, Kids, Spotlight and Special Events Slates
Last week Sundance released its competition, NEXT and New Frontier slates; today, we have the premieres, midnight, kids, spotlight and special events slates. Highlights of what’s below include new films from Miguel Arteta, Andrew Dosunmu, Ry Russo-Young, Luca Guadagnino, Michael Almereyda and Dee Rees, as well the directorial debut of Sicario/Hell or High Water screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. PREMIERES Beatriz at Dinner / U.S.A. (Director: Miguel Arteta, Screenwriter: Mike White) — Beatriz, an immigrant from a poor town in Mexico, has drawn on her innate kindness to build a career as a health practitioner. Doug Strutt is a cutthroat, self-satisfied billionaire. When these […]
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Sundance Film Festival Announces the 2017 New Frontier Slate
On the heels of yesterday’s announcement of the competition and NEXT slates, today Sundance has unveiled its New Frontier slate. Now in its 10th year, the section is devoted primarily to AR, VR and a variety of installations. Highlights from this announcement include new films from Travis Wilkerson and Jem Cohen, a performance by Terence Nash, plus the latest from VR veteran Nonny de la Peña and a new VR project from Rose Troche. FILMS AND PERFORMANCE 18 Black Girls / Boys Ages 1-18 Who Have Arrived at the Singularity and Are Thus Spiritual Machines: $X in an Edition of $97 Quadrillion […]
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“The Military System and a Movie Set are Similar”: Rachel Lang on Baden Baden
Described as the most daring section of the Berlinale, Forum aims to straddle art and cinema. Launched in the late ’60s to diversify the festival, Forum still showcases perhaps the most progressive and experimental films of the 400 total that are slated in Berlin’s beast of a festival. There were 44 titles selected for Berlinale’s Forum program this year, and of the 34 world premieres and 9 international premieres, several played at Berlin’s arthouse Arsenal cinema in the festival’s wake. Though this year’s program was focused on the Arab region, Forum is known for its dissidence and commitment to presenting unpredictable and unconventional lineups. This year, the […]
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Sundance Film Festival Announces 2017 Competition and NEXT Lineup
Here’s the first lineup for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, with more to come in the days ahead regarding Special Presentations, Midnight Madness et al. Some highlights from the group below: new films by Alex Ross Perry (Golden Exits), Gillian Robespierre (Landline), and David Lowery’s recently revealed “secret feature” (A Ghost Story). Also: the sophomore feature from Dustin Guy Defa (Person to Person), Dayveon, the first feature by one of our 25 New Faces of Film, Amman Abbasi, and the documentary Casting JonBenet, on which Filmmaker‘s editor Scott Macaulay is a producer. U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, […]
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Moonlight, O.J.: Made in America, Casey Affleck, Isabelle Huppert Top 26th Annual Gotham Awards
TUESDAY AFTERNOON WRITE-THROUGH In 2008, Barry Jenkins remembered on one of several trips up to the podium tonight at the 26th Annual IFP Gotham Awards, held, as usual, at Cipriani Wall Street, he was in this same room as one of the nominees for Best New Director. He lost that year to Ballast‘s Lance Hammer, and, as he went on to note, he hasn’t made a film in the long eight years following. (Neither has Hammer, actually, although I hear that’s changing.) Until Moonlight. His beautiful, amazingly accomplished and much beloved second feature took home four awards tonight, including the […]
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American Honey, Moonlight, Free in Deed Score as 2017 Independent Spirit Awards are Announced
Jenny Slate and Edgar Ramirez unveiled the nominations for the 2017 Independent Spirit Awards today at Los Angeles’s W Hollywood Hotel. As always, many of the most heralded independent films of the year scored multiple nominations, including Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, Pablo Larrain’s Jackie and Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea. All these pictures were nominated for Best Picture as well as receiving nominations in several other categories. But one film that has yet to receive distribution in the States — Free in Deed, by 25 New Face Jake Mahaffy — also received many nods, including Best […]
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Ten Tips for Securing “Out of the Box” Funding from DOC NYC
At a DOC NYC panel titled “Out of the Box Funding,” moderator Julia Labassiere (Chief Executive of BAFTA NY) defined the prhase as “anything besides getting a commission (for example, from HBO or National Geographic, etc.).” Marilyn Ness, producer of Cameraperson and Trapped, started the panel off by noting that there are no shortcuts to obtaining so-called “out of the box” money: “It’s a lot of work.” Here are ten tips for how to successfully bring in this type of funding. First Money: Friends, Family and Affinity Groups When you begin a new film, you have to figure out your […]
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Self Protection for Filmmakers: Security Rules to Live by from DOC NYC
Of all the panels I attended at Doc NYC, the one called Protecting Yourself, on November 16, gave me the most hope for the future. The filmmakers were an impressive line-up of first-timers and veteran filmmakers, linked by their willingness to put themselves in dangerous situations in order to shine a light on stories otherwise cloaked in secrecy, denial and misinformation. The panel was moderated by Caty Borum Chattoo, Co-Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University. At several points, the audience was asked not to tweet or do social media on certain statements. Some details […]
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From DOC NYC, Five Takeaways from Veteran Documentary Editors on Successfully Cutting Doc Features
On Sunday I attended two editing-focused events at DOC NYC PRO. The “Morning Manifesto” was delivered by Matthew Hamachek, editor of films including Cartel Land and Amanda Knox. Later that afternoon, veteran editor Geof Bartz, Supervising Editor at HBO and a three-time Oscar winner, gave a masterclass on what to do when the pieces don’t fit. Having recently taken the Edit Center’s six-week Art of Editing Course at the IFP Made in New York Media Center, and currently assisting on the edit of a feature doc with a lot of moving parts, this seemed like a good way to spend […]
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Five Questions for Orange Sunshine Director William A. Kirkley
Dubbed the “Hippie Mafia,” the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a collective of people in Orange County in the ‘60s and ’70s that grew from a spiritual commune to the largest distributors of LSD at that time in the world. For the first time, their story is told in-depth on film in William A. Kirkley’s riveting documentary Orange Sunshine, the name of their most famous strain of the psychedelic drug. Founded by John Griggs and collaborators Mike and Carol Randall, brothers Rick and Ron Bevan and Travis Ashbrook, the Brotherhood sought to change the planet with a cultural and spiritual […]
